Hallmark Cards, Inc. Kansas City, Mo., has launched a new web site that lets shoppers create personalized albums and other memory-keeping products online. Consumers can send digital photos to HallmarkStories.com, which also is accessible via a link from Hallmark.com, and place online orders to arrange the photos in one of three hard-copy picture-keeping formats. The formats include a memory album, which is a hard cover-three ring binder; a memory magazine, a bound magazine format; and a wallet-sized, foldable snap book. The finished products are shipped within five days of being ordered. Photo greeting cards will be available from the site in time for the holidays.
To send digital photos to the site, shoppers can upload scanned images saved on a hard drive or transfer picture files from a digital camera or CD. A tutorial on the sits is there to answer any questions. To further personalize the finished photo products, shoppers can select different story themes, which will arrange the photos in the finished album, magazine or snap book according to events such as new baby, family vacation, and birthdays; or they can create their own.
The new online service stems from Hallmark’s consumer research, which showed that family photos often stay piled up in shoeboxes or stranded on diskettes and hard drives rather than being displayed. “We learned how important memory keeping and sharing is to our target consumer, mothers of children aged newborn to 12,” says C.J. Howe, group marketing manger. “We also learned many mothers with young children don’t formally record memories because they’re time-starved and lacking in confidence. No company is more uniquely qualified to engage consumers with their memories than Hallmark.”
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